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TORIES IN EYE WITNESSES O THF E CLEARANCES KEN CURRIE THE GAL-GAEL PEOPLES OSCOTLANF D POETRY • MUSIC • FICTION • REVIEWS

THE MAGAZINE FOR SCOTTISH AND INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE, ARTS AND AFFAIRS Contents Raymond Ross Editorial 2 Tony Milligan "Tories in Kilts " Mourning for the Aristocracy 3 Alastair McIntosh The Gal-Gael Peoples of 6 David Craig Eye-Witnesses of the Clearances 16 Thorn Nairn Three Poems 19 Moira Duff Two Poems 20 Peter Jones Ken Currie, Oral History and Popular Memory 21 Luis Cernada Poem 25 Ali Smith Feminine Intelligence (Review) 26 Ernie Hilbert Poem 27 John Burns Unfolding World (Review) 28 Edward Mackinnon Poem 29 Thorn Nairn The Good Doctor Holub (Review) 30 Billy Watt Poem 31 Antaine MacManais Devolving the Merry Muse 32 Aonghas Macneacail Poem 34 Ken Poem 35 Ian Nimmo White Poem 36

Editor Cencrastus RAYMOND ROSS Unit One, Abbeynwunt Techbase, 8 Easter Road, Edinburgh EH 8 8EJ Managing Editor Telephone: 031-661 5687 RUTH BRADLEY Front Cover Cencrastus Ken Currie: Fight or Starve - wandering is published with the assistance of the Editorial Assistants through the Thirties (1985) Scottish Arts Council. fOANNE BURNS, EILEEN BURNS RICHARD MOORE, ZSUZSANNA VARGA, Inside Front Cover Sacred Peace Pipe Carrier Fulian Stone Eagle Views expressed by contributors are not DONNA RODGER Henry (pic: Murdo Macleod) necessarily those of the Editor or the Editorial Board Inside Back Cover: Editorial Advisers. WILLIAM WALLACE, IAIN CRICHTON Alastair McIntosh and Stone Eagle Henry at site of SMITH, proposed superquarry on Harris (pic: Murdo Unsolicited material accompanied by an SA.E. BILL FINDLAY, HAMSHHENDERSON Macleod) is welcome. Please allow up to eight weeks for a THOM NAIRN decision to be made. Inside Back Cover: Design & Typesetting Jimmy Sweeney, Pollock (pic: Drew Farrell) GEORGE PITCHER, EDINBURGH

Copyright reserved ■ ISBN 0264-0856 Printing MAYFAIR PRINTERS, SUNDERLAND

Cencrastus 1

The Gal-Gael Peoples of Scotland Alastair McIntosh

Written at the request of and dedicated to Tawny, Colin and Gehan MacLeod and other powerful gentle warriors at the Pollok Free State M77 Motorway Protest in , whose endeavours for renewal are both ecological and cultural. We, the Gal-Gael, being a loose association of some native peoples of Scotland ,extend our hand to all other indigenous peoples in the world. By invitation of Firs tNation friends in North America we ask to address you with these words.

(I) The Shoaling by apple fragrant Avalon Dear fellow creatures, sisters, brothers, children: When sun's white light streams in through for some years now we have been listening raindrop lens and rainbows arch the covenant of hope4 Awakening to hear you speak all colours make all peoples from one source in ocean swell across the great Atlantic And so it is we here in musical rhythms danced from brightest and more besides Africa's savannah have wrestled long and hard with what it in wind's feathered mantras fluttering out means from prayer flags to be a Scottish native peoples of the high Himalaya of diversity in ancient Aboriginal songlines What does it mean waulking even through Precambrian to be the black among us like the white bedrock folds1 the Pole, Italian, Russian and Pakistani of overwork! high roads the Tamil, Sinhalese the Japanese and underworld low roads2 Chinese North South East English just as Scot or Welsh, Flemish German West of our own recovering discovering Moslem Jew pagan shamanic tradition Irish - Protestant and Catholic? By all such ways and more What does it mean for us a rainbow dear long-lost much-abus'ed friends spectrum we have heard the speaking of your drums to be a Peoples of this place? been touch'ed Fully indigenous. Fully belonging. late if not last by open waiting of your hearts By salmon's course And ask you to accept us now we have arrived a native peoples long shoaling at the estuary, waiting, waiting, the 'Gal-Gael'3 waiting of Scotland, Alba, but Spate now running So we leap ... these Northern tracts of Albion Protesting motorways in Glasgow

1 Woven cloth (tweed) was traditionally softened by "waulking," i.e. thick folds along the length being communally and rhythmically pounded to the accompaniment of waulk• ing songs. Margaret Fay Shaw (Folksongs and Folklore of , Aberdeen Uni. Press, 3rd Edn., 1986, p. 7) remarks: "Those were the days when a wearer could regard his homespun from the Hebrides with the thought of the songs and gaiety that went into the making of it" 2 In the "Loch Lomond" song, the lover to be executed expects to reach Scotland first because, after death, the soul was believed rapidly to travel home under the surface of the Earth - the "low road." 3 Normally spelt "Gall" in English, but "Gal" Is how it has been carved in wood and stone at Pollok which, being a"free state," is permitted a measure of distinctive anarchy. 4 Here a social connotation, but cf. Genesis 9:9-17 where the rainbow signifies ecological covenant

Cencrastus 6 Refuting superquarry mountain destruction ... Cleared ... to fact'ory or to emigrant ship Bride's isle the He-brides1 ... dumped ... Aotearoa ... North America8 Fighting to heat the dampened love-warm ... recruited ... skirling hireling regiments of crisis-torn homes "Queen's Owned Highlanders"9 of those of us in urban native reservation Empire stitched from butcher's wounds housing schemes opp'ressed turned oppressor sprung from (where TV up a tower block offers nature's oppressed' pain only window2 both sides the Atlantic surging with emotion one fifth of Scotland's people live in poverty) Intergenerational Transatlantic Cultural And "resetting seeds of Eden"3 Trauma one foot venturing into Eden4 a three-way brokenness with Muir and Burns, MacDiarmid, White native peoples our side, the Ossianic and mostly unnamed women's song5 Western edge pressing down "wet desert" sod to replant native peoples their side, the Eastern oceanic native trees6 seaboard in Border dale and Highland strath and Everywhere that breaking dominant and on the blighted bing disembedded culture Struggling to regain that is in part a music, dance and language us too once usurped from forebears' cradling embrace Can you forgive us? usurped to break the spirit Red woman, man, child, creature take our land red earth and even God and gods and saints of old Can we together mend these bygone and scar the very strata deep ongoing murders with alcohol soaked nicotine smoked Prozac of murdered souls murdering bodies filled choked with soul dysfunctionality cultural genocide Roman Norman Modern Lateral violence of unresolv'ed angst7 Empire unable to engage- corporate limited liability limited with power from above responsibility so sideways striking to and from within and IMF, GATT-World Trade Organisation, all around World Bank ... hurting ... hurting ... hurting ... triumvirate idols Mammon Moloch Money10 with intergenerational poverty knocking on loansharks surfing water gardens of the poor from then to now thrashing around in usurious name of pax people disempowered in rent-racked famine prosperity days Half a million Highland folk ... (Lowlanders before like English further back in time) ... Cleared ... from kindly providential clachan

1 The name, "Hebrides," probably results from scribal errors. The earliest reference was to "Ebudae." However, the sense of Inferring "Bride's Isles" (i.e. Brtgh, Bride, Bridey, Brigit) is too pleasing to reject in a literary work. As note about Kilbride implies, it is eminently appropriate. 2 On the relation between ecology and Scotland's urban poor, see MSc human ecology dissertation work of Tara O'Leary, Nae fur the Likes O' Us: Poverty, Agenda 21 and Scot• land's Non-Governmental Organisations, at press, Scottish Affairs, summer 1996. 3 Mike Collard, Future Forests, Bantry, Ireland. 4 Edwin Muir, One Foot in Eden. 5 I.e. Kenneth White, Scots born professor of 20th Century Poetics at the Sorbonne. His work has greatly influenced this piece. Inspired partly by Walt Whitman, he proposes "poetics, geography - and a higher unity - geopoetics ..." (Elements of Geopoetics, Edinburgh Review, 88,1992,163-178). Through Tony McMahon, Kenneth alerted me to the shamanic nature of Burns's work; see A Shaman Dancing on a Glacier Burns, Beuys and Beyond, Supplement to Artwork 50,1991. ,2-3, and 'Tarn O'Shanter': An Interpretation, Scottish Literary lournal. 17:2,1990, 5-14. 6 Frank Fraser-Darling, author of the famous study in human ecology, West Highland Survey. 7 Jane Mlddleton-Moz, American therapist, whose talk at the International Transpersonal Association conference in Killarney, 1994, inspired my thinking about the need for cul• tural psychotherapies - a notion I now see that Paulo Freire was also effectively aware of. 8 Aotearoa - indigenous people's name for New Zealand. 9 Lewis poet Mary Montgomery - poem by this name. 10 Moloch was an Old Testament god into whose fire filled stone arms the children were sacrificed to secure present prosperity. American theologian Walter Wink advocates new ways of "naming, unmasking and engaging the powers" in order to transform and redeem power. In this sense Moloch can be seen to have many contemporary incarnations, not least nuclear weapons.

Cencrastus 7 ... Trashing all ... All ... but that Invincible The superquarry threatened Sbuth Harris prophetic Remnant of humanity1 igneous complex that hazel nut-like flotsam coasting oceans (surveyed by supine Roineabhal of the heart in Exodus beholding all Scarista's ancient parish of those holograms of wisdom Kilbride8 dropped by tree of life in sacred trout filled annunciating Brigh, Bride, Brigit, womanhood limpid pool2 of God9 swept down of old on mighty streams of from Barra and the South to Clisham and righteousness3 beyond ... the Holy He-brides but cast up fragile yet relentlessly on shore of these scattered jewels from God's eighth day modern times4 of legen'dary last Creation act)10 there to wait reminding us, remindin gus, re- Ohhh ... the lithogenic litany ... "turn but a mindingus ... stone an angel stirs"11 ... re-member ... re-vision ... re-claim ... The Cairngorm pegmatites and sparkling and with a raindrop soft pre-emptive start Aberdeenshire granite reminding too that "only forgiveness ... The Old Red Sandstone breaks the law of karma"s The Durness limestone sequences and Bathgate's forest Carboniferous (II) Invocation The Tertiary radiating basalt dykes from great Ohhh ... friends we call across the seas to you volcanoes Mull and Raasay from echo chamber of the soul The Sgurr of and Ailsa Craig we call now stirred by rhythm that you drum (where seventh century Irish shaman Sweeney We call upon the triple billion year old roosted)12 songlines of world's oldest rock The Seat of Arthur "I lift a stone; it is the meaning of life I clasp" (watching over Calton faerie hill13 - says the bard MacDiarmid6 where pending Parliament awaits return of So let us honour stone. Let us call afresh the Stone of Destiny) foundational litany: The Calanais standing stones and Ring of Brora The Lewisian Gneiss ... The high crosses of pulsing Ireland Ireland ... Druim Alban's kelson of the Baltic to Southern Hebridean Ireland Canadian Shield7 The twin menhirs of Muirkirk

1 Eg. Isaiah 11:21-22; 1 Kings 19. In the Old Testament the "Remnant" are the few remaining people o fGod. A rol eof prophets-visionaries who "speak truth to power "especially on issues of social and ecological justice - was to "gather" the Remnant to restore society. Shamanic understanding opens a whole new realm of revised biblical insight The shamanic nature of this prophetic role is evident, prophets and shamans alike being people who step outside normal constructs of society in order, when they return, to try and heal its ills. In so doing they often had special relationships in the natural world: Moses, for instance speaks to God in a bush; each of the four apostles is totemically represented, John's being the eagle; Elijah was fed by ravens (1 Kings 17:4-6) and used his mantle for changing the state of reality (1 King s19:13; 2 Kings 2:7-15); Daniel had command over lions in th dene ;and Elisha was aided by two she-bears when the double dose of power he inherited through Elijah's mantle went to his head. His arrogance tragically resulted in forty-two children being torn apar tby the bear accomplices (2 King 2:23-24)s . Moses in Numbers 11 leads his people away from the treasure houses of Egypt towards an ecologically sound land of milk and honey, declaring as he does so, "would God that all the Lord's people were prophets" (11:29). In the spirit of "contextual theology" I have rewritten Numbers 11 as a metaphor for the work of anti-motorway protestors, likening them to a prophetic Remnant living off manna, speaking to the ills of our times ,and holding out an alternative wholesome ecological vision ("MacMoses Motorway "in Lady Godiva, 97, Orkney, 1996,18-20). In ecology, the concept of the remnant is similarly used for those remaining few area sof native flora - remnant pinewoods, etc. - which if saved will provide seedstock of local provenance to restore ecosystems. 2 In Celtic folklore, hazel nuts contained the knowledge of poetry and art .Eaten by the salmon (or "trout") on falling into sacred well sor streams they caused the re dspots on the fish's belly and conveyed wisdom to whoever first tasted juice from its cooked flesh - hence the "salmon o fwisdom" and my reference to "by salmon' scourse. "(Refs F :Maria. n McNeill, The Silver Bough. Canongate, Edinburgh, 1989 ,74-75; W B. .Yeats ,The Song of Wandering Aengus .(sung by Donovan). 3 Amos 5:21-27. 4 While writing this, inspiration was fuelled by finding a perfectly preserved small half hazel nut shell. I tlay in mud, packed hard Insid ewith peat, amongst ancient forest detritus washed out of a sea-eroded peat bank at a remote location on Great Bernera, Isle o fLewis. I was there with antiquarian Jim Crawford and we were walking to see a lobster pend wall he had rebuilt and for me to read him a draft of this work. Such ancient forest detritus usually radio-carbon date sat 4,00 0to 6,000 year sold. 5 Raimon Panikkar, Nine Sutras on Peace, Interculture. XXIV 1: ,Montreal, 1991,49-S6. This remarkable paper by a remarkable Hindu-Catholic cross-cultural scholar als pointo s to rhythm as being central to Being, and therefore to peace-making. 6 On a Raised Beach - Scotland's finest work of mystical geology. 7 Gaelic name going back to ancient times for "the spine of Britain" Highland massif. 8 Jim Crawford (note) has recently discovered foliated grave slabs at Scarista including one of the Iona School. He believes par ot f the original St Bride's Church foundation is still apparent, most of it having disappeared when the pre-Reformation church was pulled down to build what is now the building. He informs me that Kilbride (Cill(e) Bride - the cell (church or parish) of St Bride) was an old name for Harris ,marked on a map as late as 1750. The pre-Reformation parish of Kilbride extended from Harris down to Barra. Christianised as St Bride or Bridgit, Brigh originally represented the Celtic Goddess. Ancient Irish tracts associate her veneration not just with the cow and milk (thus with shieling transhumance), but also with the long-extinct bear, thus suggesting links going back to early human settlement. The MacMahon and the Scots Matheson have the bear as their totem. Use was made of this to draw on strength of gentleness at Pollok Free State. 9 cf. Song of Songs, the femininity of Sophia (Wisdom), Identified with the Holy Spirit in Proverbs 8-9, and reference to Creation pouring out of the womb of God in Job 38:8,29. 10 Rev. Alistair MacLean, Hebridean Altars. Moray Press, Edinburgh, 1937,12-13: The world was finished and the Good One was mighty tired and took a rest and, while He was resting, He thought "Well, I have let my earth-children see the power of my mind, in rock and mountain and tree and wind and flower. And Ihave shown them the likeness of my mind, for I have made theirs like my own. And I have shown them the love of my mind, for Ihave made them happy. But halt," says the Good One to Himself, " havI e not shown them the beauty of my mind." So the next day, and that was the eighth day, He takes up a handful of jewels and opens awindow in the sky and throws them down into the sea. And those jewels are the Hebrides. I had the story of it from my father's father,' he went on. 'An extra fine man, and terrible strong for th truth.e -' "John of the Cattle" of Mull. 11 George MacLeod, . 12 Seamus Heaney (trans.), Sweeney Astray, taber and faber, London, 1984. 13 The Royal High School, probable sire for a future Scottish Parliament, lies on the side of Calton Hill known for the "Fairy Boy o Leithf " legend -F Mario. n McNeill, op. dt note.

Cencrastus 8 (resanctifying desecrated opencast fields Sophia WomanSpirit Holy Spirit Rising4 ploughed of coal)1 Three times Aye the Triune Goddess The caiins to poets and to the brave land raiders Maiden Mother Crone The idle pebbles tossed Life Death Rebirth with cosmogenic tanka's spiral winkle shell2 Her mantle oh so green laid out each spring tossed to and fro, round and round, inwards to fill the world with milk and flowers outwards ... Bri'gh! ... Bri'gh! ... Bri'gh! ... dark moon full moon vortexing on today's high of the oak Cill-Dara, of Iona and of Bethlehem5 tide at noon And three-times-three - Aye Ohhh ... the rocks the rocks the rocks ring out nine blossom bells afresh from silver we call on you ... bardicbough6 Rise up from sleep sunk strata beds! Restore once more a Politics of Poetry! Giant women, wizened men, totemic creatures ... for only such poetics can again renew the once laid down to be our hills3 face of Earth Wake up! Wake up! Wake up and waulk this inform our ancient people's highest aspiration Earth in us! and like a rowan arch exclude ... bring back the land within the people's care a waiting nation's re-awaiting parcelled rogues7 ... bring back the care to touch from hand to We must restore the schools and ways of land ancient learning to stand them proud beside the richness of the (III) Re-membering new Aye ... restore what Lord and Bishop wrecked - cruel and so we have united as strong women Statutes of Iona 16098 resisting landlord's factor ... twelve most powerful Highland chiefs non-lethal direct action Crofters' War, Timex ... kidnapped ... imprisoned over winter ... strike forced to forfeit friendship, tongue, and bard's We have united, men of gentleness vocation straining back temptation just to be like them forced to put out culture's flames and bomb and bribe and blight (but done with sacred blessing's triple peat9 Turning instead the heartwood of their minds the embers only smoored so not to chill) by climbing threatened tree Aye Statues of an Iona cudgelled into modern or gently blocking course of Trident submarine time by Whitby's Roman synod (seven-hundred two-score-ten Hiroshimas each Aye post-Culloden Proscription even of our one) ancient spirit'ual dress Aye ... Aye and three times Aye three times "yes" of Holy Trinity ... Father, Child,

1 As a result of Ian Ramsay's negotiations with the Coal Board. Hopefully a wood is to be planted around them to make aspecial site. Each boulder stands some 12 feet high and would otherwise have been blasted and bulldozed as part of site landscaping. 2 The winkle is associated with Brigh (O' Cathain, p. xi, see note). In Tibetan Buddhist tankas (religious art) and In Hindu depictions of Krishna, the-conch shell symbolises the call to spiritual awakening. Spirals symbolise life. 3 A Lewis legend has it that the mountains were once giant women who lay down to sleep. 4 Waulking is the process of softening cloth by rhythmic folding and beating by a team o fwomen. A host of "waulkin songsg " accompany this work. See Carmichael (note), 443- 470. Carmichael's material from the second half of the 19th Century is also relevant to many other parts of this text, eg. faerie lore. 5 The Irish St Bride is said to have established her convent at Kildare (Cill-Dara/Doire - the church of th oak)e .The Scots equivalent was St. Bride of the Isles or Brigdhe-nam-Brat, Bride of the Mantles, or Plaid. Traditionally this was woven by Bride herself on Iona. There she lived (Fiona Macleod's perhaps inspired fiction suggesting that she learned from druids), until she was taken up in a dark blue mantle (the colour of her own eyes) by two angels and transported to Bethlehem to be foster-mother to the newborn Jesu F- sMar. • ian McNeill (ed.), An lona Anthology. Iona Community, 1990, 63-72; Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica: Hymns St Incantations. Floris, Edinburgh, 1992, 237-240. A splendid painting, St Bride, bv lohn Duncan (1913), depicts her transportation. It rests in the National Gallery of Scotland at the Mound, Edinburgh. The mantle plays a crucial role in shamanic practice. It can be seen to represent shape-shifting, consciousness change, transformation of the world and other aspects of liminal- ity. In Celtic lore Bride rolls out her green mantle on Bride's day, 1st February, each spring to restore life to the world .An Irish tune, "Her Mantle s oGreen "captures the beauty of this spirit. Burns uses the mantle as an image for consciousness change In The Vision (see below). Adamnan, Columbia's biographer, recounts that between the conception and birth of St of lona an angel appeared to his mother in sleep with "a certain mantle of marvellous beauty, in which lovely colours of all flowers were depicted." As the vision drew to a close, "the woman saw the afore-mentioned mantle gradually receding from her in its flight, and increasing in size so as to exceed the width of the plains, and to overtop the mountains and forests" (extract in McNeill (ed.), 19, op. cit. note 33, translating Adamnan 3:1). The gender construction of these Christian accounts is interesting. Woman is no longer Goddess, but nursemaid or mother to God incarnate or to the carrier of amale-gendered God's message. For those of us to whom this is a problem when taken out of the context of the totality of womanhood, such construction requires attention if we still want to draw on the best from ancient traditions in shaping spiritual understandings for today. Such work is being undertaken by some feminist Celtic theologians and hagiographers (see especially Condren, M., The Serpent and the Goddess: Women. Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland. HarperSanFransisco, 1989). 6 The Silver Bough (CelHc equivalent of the Golden Bough) is the bough of apple blossom gifted by the faeries as passport into the musical realms. The bard's bough with nine bells symbolised such connection - F. Marian McNeill op. cit note, 105-106; W. Evans Wentz, The Fairy Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1977 (1911), 336-344. 7 Bums dubbed the mercantile MPs who sold out Scotland's parliament in 1707, "Sic (such) a parcel o' rogues in a nation!" 8 For a summary of Scottish and some Irish history on this crucial period and its bardic tradition, see the Introduction to O'Baoill C, , Galr nan Clarsach. The Harp's Cry. Birlinn, Edinburgh, 1994,1-39. For discussion of bardic schools see Corkery D., ,The Hidden Ireland. Gill and MacMillan, Dublin, 1967. 9 Alistair MacLean (op. cit. note, 142-143) describes how at night In the Isles the fire would be smoored with three peats in the name of the Holy Trinity and to the nine, "The Sacred Three, My fortress be, Encircling me. Come and be round. My hearth ,my home ... Through mid of night ,To light's release."

Cencrastus 9 Aye ... we now bypass you 664,1609,17471 nature wild ... but Reality! We rise now up on eagle wings ... And see! See yon distant mythic Fiann ... above that colonisation of our lands and minds that once sunk down amangst the stanes ... as fire in head reheats the sacred salmon's became a stane6 sap2 Awakening now! In us with strength to hurl we watch it run ... a babbling silver stream from shores or catch from air anointing wisdom's ninth Proverbial dwelling not mountain boulder there left cleft upon the place the heart beach We hear with inner ear ancestral chorus, look, from some old tribal war of legendary and See, adolescent pique And Are Again Of Shining Countenance! but phantom intercontinental jet ballistic We are the Tuatha de Danann3 missile star war supergun exports emerged by standing stone from Sithean, faerie to catch them Halt! them take them from the hill sky emerged to Be again Free again the mother and beat them into railway tracks Goddess Danann's people and homesteads for the poor7 ....Holy ... Holy ... Holy ... No exiled "metaphor for the imagination" any (TV) Re-visioning more4 We are become again a people the tree ringed mushroom fringed hollow known or unknown touched knowe of light5 by rose of Scotland little white rose No fortress mound to house true nature's child that smells so sharp and sweet it breaks the unfree in wider desecrated world to be true

1 Lynch (op. cit note 15,31-36) suggests that too much has been made of the 664 Synod of Whitby's merging of the Celtic Church of Columba with that o Rome.f However, the psychological impact of a change of calendar (concerning the date of Easter) Is perhaps underestimated by the modern mind. My friend Fr. Dara Molloy of the Aran Isles, Co. Clare, is attempting to re-establish the Celtic Church. See, Refounding the Celtic Church, The Aisling. Aran Isles, 18,1996,5-13, where h writese "Th: e Roman model of Church is hierarchical, patriarchal and clerical. At all levels of Church life the priest, bishop or Pope is in charge .The Celtic model of Church i scommunitarian, inclusive, and locally con• trolled. In this model, the people are the Church, and look after it themselves while drawing on the services of the priest, bishop and Pope." 2 Yeats (op. cit note, see too his splendid but maligned book, The Celtic Twilight) ... "I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head ... I dropped the berry in a stream, and caught a little silver trout" This has got to be our finest contemporary Celtic shamanlc song Fire in the head is a shamanic experience widespread in the world, the word, Shaman, meaning "to heat." The dwelling place of wisdom, according to some interpretations of 9:1Proverb ,is thes heart. 3 According to the Irish Book of Invasions, the de Danann were driven underground by the invading some 4,000 year agos Man. y legends say they became the sidth. the people of peace, the faeries, living in the Sithean or faerie mounds. When I asked Mike Collard of Bantry "who are the faeries?" he replied that waree Th. e old nature conscious• ness is coming alive in us now. Our Milesian ways have damaged the Earth to such an extent that we are learning to listen again to the sounds from inside the hilL One of my 1994-95 MSc students, Patrick Laviolette, has undertaken research with me and done his human ecology dissertation into Scottish faerie hills as reservoirs of biodiversity. The folklore and taboos surrounding wooded ones helps maintain habitat remnants not unlike sacred groves elsewhere in the world. We hope to publish this in ECOS - journal of the British Association for Nature Conservation. 4 John Maclnnes, School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh University, St Bride's Day lecture, 1-2-96 .John described how a Uist man would say to him, "my mind was away in the Hill," the realm of faerie being an imaginal (not imaginary) realm. Another expression Is to be "away with the faeries" (cf Synge. J3A., Th, e Aran Islands, p. 284 of 1992 Den edit• tion of his Plays. Poems & Prose). To the modern "Gall," metaphor is often little understood and the imagination often dismissed as unreal. The converse is commonly true of the "Gael." Imaginal metaphoric reality is the foundation of reality in mythopoetic societies. Future dignified human survival will depend upon choosing understandings of real• ity that best accord with deep truth. Increasingly I believe this to be musical poetic, and that we must rethink Plato's elevation of the rational and denigration of rhetoric. The word, poetic, derives from the Greek poesis and means "the making." Mythopoesis is the view that poetics form the ultimate basis of reality, usually expressed in story, legend. The "West" needs a new mythopoesis to live sustainably. In the past the bards structured this and held political power exerted not least through panegyric. It is pleasing that when the Scottish Constitutional Convention launched their parliamentary proposals in November 1995 the bards were present, political speeches being interspersed with harp music, folk song and Sheboom - a troupe of women drummers. The significance of this has not escaped some of the Convention's senior organisers. 5 After completing early drafts of this text I was thrilled following his lecture on Brigh and shieling transhumance at Edinburgh University's Celtic Department to discover FesThe• tival of Brigit: Celtic Goddess & Holy Woman. (DBA Publishing, Co. Dublin, 1995) by Professor Seamas O' Cathain, dean of Celtic Studies at University College, Dublin. O' Cathain uses Nordic and Celtic (including ancient Germanic) folkloric material to propose links between Brigh and prehistoric bear cults (nb. my section IV). In a remarkable conclusion he also presents evidence to suggest that the colour-coding of Brigh's feast day (1st February) into "speckled* and "white" pertains to ancient shamanic use of the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita Muscarial. This grows in association with birch or pint "Punk" from the birch bracket fungus makes tinder, thus creating fire of both wood and, by metaphor, of the spirit O' Cathain refers to the "fitting and wonderful harmony" of this with aspects of the festival of Brigh notin, g that, "Wasson describes this combination of birch, punk and fly-agaric as 'nature's triangle', fly-agaricholdin g 'the place of honour in this Trinity (p 158). ' H. e cites the noted ethnobotanist, Wasson, as saying, "I suggest that the 'toadstool' was the fly-agaric of the Celtic world: that the toadstool in its shamanic role had aroused such awe and fear and adoration that it came under a powerful tabu (p. 159)." O" Cathain's scholarly exegesis is partly linked to Wasson's view that the fly-agaric's cap suggested an udder to the Rigveda poets, to whom it was probably the sacred soma. Soma has links with the Hindu fire god Agni and, possibly In the Celtic counterpart, with Aed meic Brecc - the "flying master-physician" of SUab hIiag in Co. Donegal. Aed means 'fire," and he is linked to Brigh's feastday. Brigh's relevance to the udder or breast is that she was also goddess of pastures and milk, the white cow being especially sacred to her (cf. Hinduism's sacred cow; some species of the mushroom psilocobe grow in cow dung).

Cencrastus 10

heart1 Take you,. First Nation Peoples, North America by eagle, deer, wild cat and long-gone bear uneasy unasked hosts to our Diaspora5 here in spirit where extinct in flesh You, Chippewa protest leader challenging Strong totems for recovery - we need strong Exon's mines, Walter Bresette totems at this time says ... "We are all native people now. The Remember ... that three years before door is shut. We are all inside."6 Culloden massacred gasp from clansfolk's tribal You, Mi'Kmaq superquarry warrior chief Sulian voice Stone Eagle Herney the last wolf was shot extinct in Scotland2 says ... "Your mountain, your shorelines your Nature's death precursing culture's "thickest rivers and your air night"3 are just as much mine and my grandchildren's Culloden - last battle mainland British soil 1746 as ours is yours."7 internal colonial conquest You, great teacher huntress Winona La Duke8 blood mingling inseparably soaked through walking troubled by the Minnesota lakes moss Drumossie moor who rejects "genocide by arithmetic" friend and foe and which i s"us" and which is that allows "indigenous" belonging "them" now? to be governmentally defined by statutes Where the "Gaeltachd" wither "Galltachd" staturing racial purity Unavoidably mingled Rejecting thresholds like one-sixteenth blood for a' that and a' that relationship sacrificing, sanctifying, down to an ice-age to be a Sioux or Cree or Cherokee cleans'ed strata for human love will always that is both cultural and in depth, mingle, meld, and make of prismed light archaeological4 a golden melanged mockery of all pretensions long stinking but now compost-rendered for to any presumption new growth of racial purity Something poised that violates sunlight's loving magic dance ... both psychic and somatic a dance insisting ... genetic and prophetic as it pleases, teases Remnant sprig from taproot of antiquity Equally to be white light, coloured light awaiting spring to bud re-formed or warm absorbing dark that holds all light and Blossom as is needed in our agitated times ... a cultural cultivation ... (V) Re-claiming Indeed! Let us observe that Aye ... aye ... aye the capacity of nature and of human nature Scotland understands a thing or two about to be hurt belonging is exceeded We have a Gaelic proverb: in the fullness of time "The Bonds of Milk are Stronger than the Bonds only of Blood"9 by the capacity to heal ... Nurture, kinship, counts for more than mere And that must be joy's greatest cause for hope blood lineage And so let us propose So you ... our friends to whom this statement an ancient new criterion for belonging here; is addressed All Are Indigenous, Native To This Place. All You, we know, will understand. Who Are Willing To Cherish

1 MacDiarmid - The Little White Rose. The Burnett rose (Rosa splnosissima) has been a totem for our original work with the Isle of Eigg Trust As Neil Gunn noted, it grows on (what is almost certainly from his description) Eigg "in greater abundance than anywhere else I know. It is the genius of this place .... For me it has a fragrance more exquisite than that of any other rose" (Highland Pack. Faber ,1949). Mention here is included at the request of, and in honour of the Trust's founder, Tom Forsyth. 2 Martin Mathers of Worldwide Fund for Nature (Scotland) pointed this out to me. 3 Burns, Strathallan's Lament (see note). 4 Acknowledgement to Seamus Heaney for the concept of the bog as the unconscious. 5 My friend and mentor in some of the issues discussed in these notes, Michael Newton of the Celtic Department, Edinburgh University, strenuously points out that the Gael did not in the first Instance choose to be a coloniser, but became perforce a party to others' colonising aspirations. A rightly proud claim of modern Irish people is, "We were colo• nised, but never colonised anybody else." Residual Pictish voices might think otherwise ... but with no hard feelings any longer, especially as incursions between like tribes make poor comparison with the principles of Romanesque colonia. 6 During a |oint ceremony that we conducted at a University of Wisconsin conference on and ecological resistance, 199S. 7 Harris proposed superquarry public inquiry precognition statement 8 At International Transpersonal Association conference, Killarney, 1994. 9 I think my source of this was a Ronnie Black (Edinburgh Uni. Celtic Dept) article in the West Highland Free Press several years ago.

Cencrastus 12 And Be Cherished Today eight-tenths of Scotland's private land By This Place is owned by less And Its Peoples than one tenth of one percent y All are indigenous, native to this place. All of Scotland's people4 who are willing to cherish Lef s call a spade a spade: and be cherished ... too many of us languish lost by this place in concrete jungles' and its peoples post-indusf rial Those whose souls so resonate redundancy All we, known and unknown to us dumped there by those who see no treasure in are troubled claiming for ourselves each soul the obvious tribal names of indigeniety. (for that is what distinguishes Few if any are "pure" their force for life-extinguishing Pict, Norse, Flemish, Saxon, Angle, in sectioning nature off Indian, Greek, Hispanic, Arab these men of property) Scotia's royal lineage to daughter of Pharaoh. We've had enough! Even Gaelic tongue of Irish forebears We now insist on being heard and standing up dappled once a Pictish land and standing out with blood as well as milk and coming into Being So What Choice Have We speaking as it is our truth to power for what it is " ... fur the wains'sake ... our ane sake ... "5 But To Embrace Full Spectrum? So we declare ... identity What choice want we a claim of right save the pleasures so to do? a name that mingles, honours And to SHINE ON. Oh yes friend. SHINE ON!1 many nations in this place Once Vikings raped and pillaged here A bioregional identity defending place and then too melded nae force of arms gentle with the healing power of place and time but power o' reverence Became us! transcending narrow nationalism became "Gall-Gaidheil," the Gal-Gael so not to bleach out ethnic richness rainbow "emerged as a mixed ethnic group by the hues middle of the ninth century"2 and not to fight in ways that scar and cannot be in the Hebrides and south-west Scotland undone giving Gall-oway its name but yet to find a focal understanding ... and Isle of Lewis, Harris - "Innse Gall" - the Isle some constellation of belonging ... of Strangers3 of folk and place and wonted work6 terrible then, a violated and a violating people (like us today perhaps?) (VI) Affirmation but us they were Well ... here we are We're all Gal-Gael now Round protest hearth in Glasgow's Pollok wood and only by facing the shadows of history and we again evoke the name can sunlight warm our backs "Gal-Gael" and melt the frozen crust Impure. Bitter-sweet. Riddled with of ice congeal'ed blood around the heart. contradiction.

This line is prompted not just by Pink Floyd's famous "shine on you crazy diamond," but also by the way in which "Glasgo wTwo "hunger striker Tommy Campbell ends his let• ters from Shotts prison. Tommy's and Joseph Steele's campaign for judicial review is not just personal, but concerns the quality of Scottish justice generally. Shine on! Tommy. Your captors may or may not be dead, but you're certainly not. Smythe, A. D., Warlords and Holy Men. Edinburgh University Press, 1984,156-157. It is a paradox that the Long Island, Lewis and Harris together, became known by the Gael of the past by this name because mainly Viking settlement meant that so many stran• gers (Gall) lived there; but now it has become the Remnant heartland of the Gael. This resonates richly Into the philosophy of cultural renewal behind Pollok's "Gal-Gael" con• cept. From the Scottish Landowners' Federation's own perhaps exaggerated claim that their 4,000 members control 80% of Scotland's private (non-government) land. A 1976 study showed that just 35 families or companies possessed on third of the Highlands' 7.39 million acres of private land. See McIntosh, A., Wightman, A an. d Morgan, D., Reclaiming the : Clearance, Conflict and The Ecologist. 24:2,1994,64-70. Braendam women interviewed in O'Leary, op. cit note (wains = children). I.e. the Patrick Geddes human ecology trilogy of folk, work, place. The pun on "wonted" is deliberate. Something is "wonted" if it is habitual, belonging to a place or custom, cf. "as is her wont." Michael Newton points to the similarity of the Gaelic word duth.

Cencrastus 13 But belonging here, now native brothers sisters children here and now in other heartlands of the real, the reel to and fro We ask from you acceptance rocking ... rocking ... rocking of our peoplehood Rolling into life and promised life abundant1 We ask you weave our native threads Cherishing and being cherished to fabric of one scintillating cloth A native peoples that is the mantle of the world We are indigenous! We pledge to you support We stir our voice in singing back this place! for all work sourced in love recovering right relation'ship your territories The song breaks out from deep within And ask from you forgiveness Strathallen's torrent roars anew for past injustice, ignorance and spoils of The oak to triumph o'er war's din fear or greed the world is with a friend now2 We need your help with Spirit's grace to find clear paths through tangled modern Aye Rabbie Burns - your passion's won two hundred years your Vision's come Waste Land tares to seed as oaks as Gods each one prodaiming The bards like emerald earls returned3 no more the people's soul be spurned Jubilee4 To fly in fair formation as wild geese ...5 (VII) Homecoming To hear afresh that deep poetic story Dear fellow creatures of magic set in time when place began ...

1 John 10:10. 2 Burns. In Strathallan's Lament Burns portrays the psychic collapse of Strathallan who can no longer en|oy nature (the river's torrent, etc.) and sees the wide word before him "but a world without a friend." In The Tree O' Liberty Burns uses the oak as a symbol national strength arid freedom: "Wi' plenty o' sic trees I trow / the world would live in peace, Man / the sword would help to mak a plough / the din o' war would cease, Man." 3 Colin MacLeod started Polfok Free State M77 protest site by planting an eagle totem pole after having experienced an eagle vision quest and protesting alone up a tree for two weeks with a copy of Burns. This then intermingled with the culture of surrounding Pollok and Govan, Gehan Ibrahim's peace protest insights from Faslan etc. ean, d ideas from English road protestors such as the Dongas Tribe. Colin drew my attention to Burns's remarkable call to restore the bardic basis of culture in The Vision. Here Burns is given a vision quest by the Celtic muse who appears as a woman. Her mantle transforms to reveal the whole cosmos and sends Burns off into shamanic rapture. Her mission was: "To give my counsels all in one / Thy tuneful flame still careful fan / Preserve the dignity of Man / With soul erect / and trust the Universal Plan / will all protect" This which might be taken as a new manifesto for Scottish education. It might entail a tripple interface between the bardic schools, the monastic schools, and modern schools, especially those embodying feminist eplstemology. Our Peoples' Free University of Pollok, which taught "degrees in living" to striking school children and other M77 protestors, was one such experiment My reference to reversing the flight of the Irish earls should be taken as metaphoric. I mean that we need to replenish the psychic vacuum left when the traditional leadership took flight in Ireland's "saddest day;" not a wish to see restoration perse of the traditional patriarchal military leadership forms of the clans of the Scots-Irish Gaelic continuum. Incidentally, it should be noted that that continuum was split as a result of deliberate colonial policy by King James V Iand 1 who instituted the a,s well as the Statutes of Iona and the colonisation of the Eastern American seaboard. As Malcolm MacLean of the Gaelic Arts Project on Lewi sayss th, e Irish peace process is also helping now to remake links between Irish and Scottish identity (see also Maclnnes,}., The Gaelic Continuum in Scotland, in OTJriscoll, R. (ed.). The Celtic Consciousness. Canongate, Edin• burgh, 1981). Many of us who grew up in Presbyterian homes on Lewis now deeply resent the conditioning then often imposed on us to the effect that the Irish (and Southern Hebrideans) are "Papist" and therefore "Antichrist worshippers". It was a conditioning not Just of ignorance, but of long-standing manipulation by internal British colonial pol• icy that divided us against our own people and contributed to a subtle Anglophobia which we must also wrestle to overcome - especially as many English, themselves, wake up to what it means to honour soul instead of pretending that it has no place in the brilliant rational techno-sunlight of modernity. I do not want such comments to be interpreted as a total refutation of the 20th Century. As Papua New Guineans recognise with their concept of the "Melanesian Way," the future lies in us choosing what we want to meld from tradition and modernity. This means economy and technology serving community, and not vice versa as is the case with the triumvirate institutions derived from Bretton Woods (IMF etc.) to which I earlier alluded. See McIntosh, A., Journey to the Hebrides, Scottish Affairs. 6,1994,52-67; also my paper in a philosophical journal of environmental policy, The Emperor has no Clothes ... Let us Paint our Loincloths Rainbow: A Classical and Feminist Critique of Contemporary Science Policy, Environmental Values. 5:1, 1996,3-30. Canon Angus MacQueen of Barra is one of my inspirers in thinking about the bardic schools .Douglas Fraser interviewing him for The Scotsman (Weekend, 1-10-94,2-3 quote) s him as saying, "All we want is the privilege of remaining poor and being crofters. Crofting is about poverty with dignity. If you stand on your own four or eight acres, you are monarch of all you survey, and it gives you a natural dignity which you are without the moment you walk on to the mainland." ... But MacQueen has faced criticism for extending his views to education, for many Hebrideans, the only way out of poverty. Schools, he says, should be teaching them the bardic traditions of an oral culture, hot encouraging them to leave the island for college. "Education now in the Hebrides is rubbish," says the Canon. "These schools should be in the middle of England. The 80% of them who want to be fishermen should be encouraged to do what they want But the younger people now want to get on. Education has ruined them, and made parents ambi• tious for their children to get on, when they should be enjoying life. I don't blame them for wanting to get on, but I feel more at home with the lad or the girl who leaves school at 16 to become a fisherman or whatever. For those who have to go through the rough world of colleges and university, It's very unbalancing. So many of them are packing in half way through their courses. A Hebridean will find a quality of life, or else become an alcoholic or drug addict He will cave in completely." Having myself left Lewis to go to University and "get on and get out," I could not have appreciated the significance of Canon MacQueen's words until reflecting on my own background after serving as deputy-head of a school for "drop-out" children in Papua New Guinea, where the same issues apply. 4 Partly allusion to Burns's Tree of Liberty; also Isaia 61:3h . Note that when Jesus launched his ministry in Luke 4 by reading from Isaiah 61 he stops and closes the book half way through the second verse: i.e. he is selective in his use of Scripture. He associates himself with being in solidarity with the poor and freeing the oppressed, he continues up to the point of proclaiming the "acceptable year of the Lord" - probably reference to the remarkable land ethic of Leviticus 25 wherein the land is rested every seventh year and every fiftieth year, i.e. after seven limes seven, all debts are cancelled and land that has been traded is returned to its original owners. Social and ecological justice are thus regularly re• established (though there is no actual historical record of this being carried out). What Jesus avoids i sto continue reading from the text If he had, he would have got straight into "the day of vengeance of our God" and "the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen..." etc.. A sCarl Jung suggests in his brilliant Answe rlob to Ol. d Testament and some New Testament scripture can be read as a process of God's growing up into being humanised as God through interaction with humankind within the constraints of time, and not just the other way round. How else, Jung asks, do we account for a supposedly omniscient God's infantile behaviour in making pacts with the Devil to torment poor Job? Was incar• nation not as much a necessity for God as for humankind? And one might add, is not the reciprocal of being of a culture where mythopoetic narrative runs that we are made in God's image that, in a sense, God is also in our image? The profound Implications of such "heresy" are better understood from the insights of Hindu Atman-Brahman metaphys• ics (i.e. individual soul is universal soul). However it is also present in Christian scripture. For instance, in Jesus's parable of the vine, and most profoundly, in a text that conven• tional biblical commentaries and clergy generally overlook because It falls to fit with the dogma of Jesus being the unique son of God: John 10:34-36. Her Jesue s draws upon Psalms 82:6 for authority in claiming that, effectively, all who heed God are sons and daughters of God; indeed, all such are Gods. This might cast some light on the enigmatic plurality of the Godhead in the early chapters of Genesis. 5 Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit, though when George MacLeod of the Iona Community was asked by his biographer, Ron Fergusson, what was his source, he replied, "I have no idea. I probably made it up" (pers. com.). As for standing stones, any Christian critique of new found veneration for such "sacred sites" must start by taking account of what might be learned of their purpose from Scrip• ture. As always. Scripture Is deeply ambivalent on such matters (cf. smashing of standing stones in Exodu 34:10-15s not; e that the "sacred poles" denounced by the jealous patri• archal representation of God in this text were emblems of Asherah (Astarte, Ashteroth), Goddess of love and fecundity -Jerusalem Bible footnote). Nevertheless, we might refl ect that the Book of Joshua closes by Joshua setting up a standing stone to mark the new-found monotheism of his people:"... and (Joshua) took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto al lthe people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness untus fo: or it hath heard all.the words of the Lord which he spake unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God." -Joshu a24:26-27 .Jacob, after his dream of a ladder reaching into heaven declared, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and 1 knew it not" He then erected the stone that had been his pillow saying, "And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house" -Genesis 29:11-22.

Cencrastus 14 To make a life worth living ... Notes to the Text To save this Earth ... These notes are provided to aid interpretation, provide acknowl• edgements and give background information that might interest ... And play from down the hollow hill1 the reader. However, there is also a political reason. The text has A hallowed music been written before the Isle of Harris proposed superquarry pub• lic inquiry decision has been made by the Secretary of State for Sacred dance Scotland. Pro-quarry forces are currently lobbying hard in an ef• That is our soul ... fort to reverse local opinion. Some are maintaining efforts to damage the character of prominent quarry opponents. Sir John ... our soil Lister Kaye, former chair of Scottish Natural Heritage North 1 West, lost his job it is thought partly because of his robust anti- Yours, for auld long sine quarry stance. Rev. Professor Donald MacLeod who gave evi• Beltane Full Moon Wolf Festival dence with Chief Stone Eagle and me at the public inquiry has undergone but survived a character assassination attempt Pollok Free State, Scotland, 3 May 1996 through the courts, linked to his wider efforts to bring radical (narrated by Alastair McIntosh)3 liberal reform to the Free Church. His quarry testimony and the platform he shared has been cited as part of "the problem" with him. And Edinburgh University are closing the Centre for Hu• man Ecology where I work (see New Scientist editorial, 4 May 1996, A Narrow Kirk in Edinburgh), because of what the dean of science describes as problem of "control." At least until after the quarry decision has been made, I need to protect against this text being misunderstood and misused back home on Lewis. Accord• ingly, and at the regrettable risk of alienating some readers, I have therefore included footnotes to demonstrate compatibility with and to acknowledge imagery drawn from biblical sources, as well as to indicate sources which enable linkage with a pre- Christian continuum. This totality is the richness and hidden strength of our culture. It is a potent key in joining together deep cultural taproots of both social and ecological justice.

Again, there is possible contradiction but no necessary contradiction between such "pagan" imagery and Scotland's Christian tradition. In tradition, the faeries are all parts of the realms of God. Gaelic Bible translator, The Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, who in 1691 wrote the remarkable text, The Secret Commonwealth oElvesf Faun. s and Fairies, (see Stewart, R.)., Robert Kirk: Walker Between Worlds. Element, Longmead, 1990) gives extensive Scriptural analysis and justification of traditional beliefs. Walter Wink in a sense updates this in volume two of his powerful trilogy on naming, unmasking and engaging the powers in a world of domination (Unmasking the Powers. Fortress Press, USA, 1992.). Fr Dara Molloy of the Aran Islands sees pre-Christian beliefs as simply being "our Old Testament." The centrality of forgiveness to at its best is of key concern to this piece on the Gal-Gael. That is why, quite apart from defending myself from being discredited by superquarry supporters, I have made such a point of weaving together Christian and pre-Christian traditions in this text I believe we must hold as a touchstone an understanding of forgiveness if we are to avoid falling into nationalistic fascism; if we are to be with MacDiarmid whilst not succumbing to his excesses; if we are to refute the use of Scottish warriorshlp material in underpinning certain American (and Scottish) racist cults (cf. Scott, K, Marching as to War, The Herald, 19-4-96,15). Forgiveness is simply acceptance - of others and, most importantly, of self Onl. y with such acceptance can the grip of the past release us into new growth; can the bonds of karma be broken to allow liberation from the potentially brutal cycle of cause and effect. It has been suggested that this is why our druidic tradition needed Christianity. But too often "Churchianity" has emphasised a transcendent otherworldly "pie in the sky when you die" type of Chris• tianity. This has contributed towards the death of nature. Such travesty is violation of 17:21Luke ,that the realm of God is here and now, and of the very concept of incarnation, metaphorical or otherwise. Many of the churches increasingly recognise this as they come to terms with "creation-centred" (not "creationist") theology that emphasises original blessing and not Just original sin. Reconnection with our own "Old Testament" in Celtic spirituality offers restoration of the face of the Earth and good news to the poor. "Old long ago" - for old time's sake. Teaching Director at the Centre for Human Ecology, . Let this work be my last published testimony before the University expell us and fire all staff because work such as this fails to fit their playing field of knowledge The text grew out of many sessions round the fire at Pollok. Many events and people contributed which is why I would see myself as more narrator than sole-author. Events included at a formative stage the visit in November 1994 of superquarry campaigner Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney, who helped to cement already strong Native American resonances and resulted in the Mi'Kmaq warrior chiefs declaring the Free State's Colin MacLeod the first ever non-Mi'Kmaq war chief in recognition of his nonviolent-direct-acHon defence of nature and community. My thanks go out to all who have commented on this text, espe• cially Tessa Ransford, Scottish Poetry Library. Contact address: Craigencalt Farm, Kinghorn Loch, Fife, KY3 9YG, 01592 891829; [email protected]. (version 24-7-96). Up-to-date contact details are www.Alastarimcintosh.com CENCRASTUS SUBSCRIBE NOW

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Photo Credits:

1. Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney, Mt Roineabhal, Harris, 1994- Murdo Macleod 2. Tree telephone, Pollok Free State M77 motorway protest, Glasgow, c. 1994 3. Alastair McIntosh, Chief Stone Eagle & Mt Roineabhal, 1994- Murdo Macleod 4. Jimmy Sweeney, Carhenge at Pollok Free State, c. 1994 - Drew Farrell

Cencrastus 15 y\g

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